Just a Metaphor
by HollywoodSabre
Summary: Star's life after David's death. Humorous oneshot crossover with 'Twister.'


A/N: This is a one-shot humor fic. I got the idea from it because (1) I like vampires and own The Lost Boys on DVD, and (2) My roommate likes natural disasters and has Twister on VHS. We noticed that LIEKOMGZORZ Jami Gertz is in both of them. Crossover time!

Disclaimer. I don't own any of the movies, characters, actors, tornados, or awesome 80s clothing.

"It's over! It's over!" Star breathed as Max's ashes spread through the air, breaking all vampires within the Emerson home of the immortal curse. Grandpa Emerson grabbed a root beer out of the fridge and confessed his knowledge of vampires, and the Frog Brothers discussed the fee they would be charging for their services.

For the next three weeks, Star visited the Emerson home often, helping Michael and his family clean up and rebuild the home that had been destroyed in the final battle. Duane and Paul's remains were buried just outside the fence, and David's body was nowhere to be seen. This, more than anything, worried Star to no end. Especially since David still seemed to have left his mark on her and on Michael. The scratches on Michael's face scarred over and never healed fully, and the both of them had adopted small tendencies that hinted at David's wild temper. The Frog brothers stuck around too; they seemed to be a good influence on Sam. They convinced him to remove the poster of Rob Lowe from his closet door.

The rest of the summer went spiffingly, and Star talked Michael into going back to school. He was a senior and would graduate after that year. Sam needed to coercion. School was during the day. It required no activities after dusk. He also refused to go to the Boardwalk once it got dark. Michael told him nothing would happen, but Grandpa's looks of skepticism as he peeped between his sliding doors overruled anything Michael could say. Laddie returned to his parents, and gave Star a large lump of money for his care and safe return.

Star was having a harder and harder time though. Everywhere she looked, she got fleeting memories of David. Even the sight of Michael's face brought images of David after he'd fed. She couldn't continue to relive those moments of insanity, and her daily life brought constant reminders. Plus, the Frog brothers kept giving her sidelong glances, as if they were ready for her to vamp out and start attacking passersby at any instant. Edgar had even gone to such lengths as always carrying a small stake and silver cross. She had to get away. Her time in Santa Carla had passed.

Lucky for her, Michael's mother had connections at Arizona State, and helped her get some scholarships and acceptance as a freshman. Michael hated the idea, but then Star was the only person he seemed to be able to talk to. Rumors at school were started because of his scars, and seemed to spread rather quickly. He started a countdown calendar to graduation on his third day of classes. David's fighting spirit didn't seem to help much, and Michael quickly got to know the administration and detention staff at the school. When Star told him she'd be going to Phoenix, he just laughed and turned away.

She took her few belongings and flew out the next week. Finding a small apartment in Tempe, she got a part-time job and waited for winter quarter to begin. Four years seemed to pass quickly, and she was soon moving to the University of Pittsburgh to finish her education. Soon enough, Santa Carla slipped almost entirely from her memory. She was so caught up in midterms, exams, papers, theses, obscure patients, and finding her specialization that even thoughts of David began to escape her mind. After graduation she moved to the Midwest. The nice, calm, boring Midwest that was far away from Ferris wheels, ocean-side piers, and bloodsucking rebels. She was surrounded by quiet fields, small cities, and a lot of couples who had terrible sex lives.

And to make sure she had no connections whatsoever with her past life, she changed her name. David may still be around, and she wanted no chance of running into him and remembering _everything_. The state of Oklahoma officially put her on record as a Dr. Melissa Reeves. Nice and boring. Normal. Who would ever guess her past life was spent as a half-vampire on the boardwalks of a California party town? She even practiced a Midwestern accent.

Somehow, she still couldn't get away from the rebel inside her. Try as she might, any date she went on ended up with the man getting sloshed or high, and her "using the restroom" and never returning to the table. One man even made her dinner one evening, and offered her a glass of dark red wine from a dusty bottle. "I've been saving this for a special occasion. A special lady," he said quietly, to which she responded, "Erk," and promptly left.

_Finally_, she met a nice, quiet guy with a great sense of humor. It took nearly a decade after leaving Michael, but she found her man. Her _weatherman_. Her fiancé. Bill Harding. There was just one problem.

"I'm already married," Bill confessed to her one night. "But the relationship's been over for a long time." It seemed like he had been gearing up for this conversation for at least a week. His hands were shaking, and he set down his glass of white wine before it ended up all over the sofa, floor, table and his trousers. He knew she refused to drink red wine. "She's got the divorce papers with her, we just need them so we can get married."

Melissa couldn't believe it. Her man. Her _weatherman_. Her fiancé. A rebel with a wife. Two so-called "tornado chasers," whatever he meant by that. She knew that he hadn't always been a meteorologist, and he had worked in the field for his early years. She didn't know he had married one of his colleagues. There was a long silence. "Alright," she finally said. "So we just need to the papers from her? And then we can take our vows and live happily ever after."

Bill was relieved. Immensely relieved. He hadn't just destroyed another relationship. He and Melissa enjoyed the rest of the evening with their white wine and quiet music, and she reveled in the normal life that she had adopted. Bill was able to get a hold of Jo two days later, and they set up a meeting out in God-knows-where, Oklahoma, just south of Woodward. It was a long drive, but with Bill's new cushy truck it was no problem. He even let Melissa choose the color.

During the drive, Bill felt compelled to explain his relationship with Jo. Melissa was more than happy to listen. When he finished, he laughed and asked, "So what dark secrets are you hiding in your past?" She returned the laugh and was saved from answering by a phone call from one of her clients. There was some nice music on the radio, and a plane flew nearby dusting the crop fields. They were there before she knew it. "Are you sure she signed them?" She was beginning to feel a bit nervous about meeting Bill's past.

She became even more nervous when she was introduced and left with Dusty. "The Suck Zone," he said as she held onto her twisty straw. This snapped her out of any other thoughts she was occupying her mind with. "The Suck Zone?" she repeated. _Bloodsucker?_ Her mind was whirling. Dusty said something about the tornado sucking someone up if they were too close. _Sucking life, right?_

"Hey!" came a voice next to her, and she jumped an inch in her chair. It was Jo. She was once again rescued from confrontation as her client called her again for what seemed like the eleventh time today. This time she was grateful. Jo took Bill off to see some kind of contraption in the back of a pickup, and she followed once she hung up.

What followed was a lot of technical jargon and tornado talk. She tried to understand, and Bill was nice enough to explain. When she asked how to get… "Dorothy" in the air, Bill said that they had to get in front of the tornado. _The rebel_. Next thing she knew, Dusty was whispering, "It's the Suck Zone" in her ear and the voice in her mind started screaming _AWAAAYYY FROM THE NECK!_

Just then, the squirrelly girl on the team went crazy and started rattling off a bunch of information. This set off an explosion of movement from everyone. She's never seen so many messy people clean up an area so fast. If David and the Boys had ever-

No No No No No. She promptly shoved their faces out of her memory with a mighty psychiatric heave. Not that it was difficult. Soon enough she was back in the red truck following the team of crazies because Jo had apparently _not_ signed the papers. To make it even easier to forget what she had just thought, she was now on the side of the road with a flat tire, after a large, black van forced Bill to drive off the road.

She confronted Jo about the relationship while Bill had the spare tire put on the truck, and got the two of them some lemonade. It was a nice day, if not a bit windy. Some lemonade would cheer them up. She walked out and the crazies were going ballistic again, though this time it appeared that Bill was leading them. The lemonade thoroughly quenched the thirst of the driver's side window as Melissa took off to keep up with the convoy of mismatched vehicles.

They were driving a bit too fast for her taste. She kept her distance. This was a bad idea. It gave her plenty of time to see the tornado attack the pickup that Bill and Jo were in. Then the truck disappeared. Then it reappeared directly in front of her. Her life flashed before her eyes, which she never wanted to repeat. Ever again. Ever. When she got home, she would be taking a very long, very hot bath with every aromatherapy candle she owned. Even the sandalwood.

She kept screaming, even after she avoided mortal peril. Her lemonade-covered door was opened and Dusty greeted her with an overly excited "THAT WAS **AWESOME!**" Melissa begged to differ, but she could not find the ability to speak at the time. She was able to detach herself from the current situation until about a half hour later when her phone rang. It was one of her clients again. She was in the back seat of the pickup, but still had a nice view of the scene around her, including the flying cow. She didn't seem to have full control over her mouth; otherwise she would have closed it. "I've got to go Julia, we have cows," she said into the phone, without realizing that she had already accidentally hung up on the woman. The cow flew by again. Her mind flashed to her own small experiments with flying. Flying cows, much like flying humans, are quite unnatural. As was the shrieking noise that followed.

Tornados began to spin the truck around, and Melissa convulsively grabbed the roof, as if to keep it from being torn off. She couldn't stop screaming. The tornados were screeching like a mad group of vampiric teenagers and the truck was surrounded by – and filled with – utter confusion. The spinning stopped and the shrieking noise disappeared. Bill and Jo looked at each other and dove out of the truck to get a better glimpse at the sky, while Melissa stayed in the truck, clinging onto the ceiling, with her head screaming _They're Comiinnnnnggg!_ nonstop.

She found herself in Bill's arms, not even able to cry because of her massive amounts of confusion. She really wanted that lemonade. "When you told me you chased tornados, deep down I always thought it was just a metaphor," she told him. He just held her tighter. She wished the day were over. But no, there was still the meeting with Aunt Meg. And the steak. No, not steak. Half of a cow placed so unceremoniously on her plate, and so Midwesternly rare that it was still practically mooing. Or flying.

Then more tornados. And more Dusty. He wanted her to look at the tornado with his telephoto lens. She was already too close to the damn thing, why did she have to look through the lens? She didn't WANT to feel it, she didn't WANT to be soaked through, and damn it, this was a _brand new white suit_. "You people are crazy, you know that!" she screamed at him. Dusty didn't seem to mind. The CB radio confessed Bill's still-existent feelings for Jo, and she spent the evening in a small motel, brooding on the events of the day, and the memories they aroused. She couldn't escape her past, even in boring, wheaty Oklahoma. A light breeze caught her attention as she twiddled her engagement ring. _Great, now I have two things to be paranoid about. David, and wind._ Her TV cut out. The paranoia set in.

"Billy?" she called as she walked outside. Billy was yelling at everyone to get inside, the crazies were… going crazy again, and before she knew it Bill was running her into the nearby hangar. They ducked into a spot that was slightly underground, along with the rest of the moviegoers and tornado crazies. One of the crazies, the bearded one, grabbed a loose steam hose in an attempt to wrangle it to the ground, and ended up getting sliced across the forehead by a flying hubcap. The sight of blood on his head sent Melissa over the edge.

She started screaming, yelling things that she didn't even fully understand. Nonsense about crazies and tornados and marriage, and culminating with something that even she would remember later: "I NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT CALIFORNIA!" Bill was cradling her, but who could notice when the tornado was performing a full-on assault with cars, lit signs, and random hangar pieces? This was worse than Santa Carla, this was worse than being a half-vampire. At least then her life wasn't threatened every two hours.

Bill's crazies found out that the tornado was headed for Wakita and Aunt Meg's steak supply, and he said he would meet her back at the motel. "I won't be there when you get back… I- I don't know where to begin," she said, flustered and holding her head in her hands. She really didn't. How could she explain her teenage years to a man who seemed to have just as wild a life? He would think she was speaking in metaphors. Very symbolic metaphors. Just the same, it was better to not even try. Bill didn't even notice that her accent was beginning to slip.

That night she called her clients, her office, and a few of her closer friends and told them she would be leaving Oklahoma. Florida sounded like a good idea, until she remembered the hurricanes. Hurricanes were bad, as they might create more flying cows. She finally decided on going back to California. At least in Santa Carla the Frog brothers had some experience in fending off the unnatural. Maybe if they saw her in the sun enough times they would trust her a bit more. Or she could just tell them about the four years she spent in Phoenix.

Star got a ride from someone going to the next largest town with a taxi service, and got a ride to a nearby airport. Within a month, her life was sorted out, her home was packed, and she was driving to Santa Carla. And only once during the trip was she mildly freaked out, when a small dust devil began attacking a field about a hundred yards away from her car. Her gas pedal was – to her extreme happiness – in fine working order. The lemonade she was sipping was not, however, as it had managed to find its way from her hand onto the seat, floor, steering wheel, and her skirt.


End file.
